Ah, I can see how that might come off a bit questionable wording wise. I am mostly referring to the fact that I am not someone who is diagnosed nor is on close terms with someone who is. Which makes it a bit more difficult for me to view those terms in their more derogatory use as I’ve not personally seen much of it or been in situations where it has been used in such a manner. I do not mean it as a brag or a “Unlike them, I don’t find offense.”
Hope that is uh, suitably explanatory
I appreciate it.
Maybe I’m a little oversensitive here, but I’m afraid this thread, rather than rightfully calling out one overzealous individual who used their position as a sensitivity reader to be dogmatic and nasty, is going to turn into open season on people who feel strongly about the way we talk about mental illness. I’ve seen it happen before. A respected and social-justice-minded journalist once wrote an article on the controversy surrounding a commercial that perpetuated the stereotypical association of mental illness and violence in order to sell fast food, and she made three jokes about the difficulty of choosing properly inoffensive language, then gave the last word to the commercial’s defenders.
I want us to be better than that.
am I cooked? I am using slurs in my wip. (its a “bad” character using them.)
If i could give my thoughts in the matter, i do believe that the context of why a slur is being use by a certain character (yes, this can include the narrator).
Like the character uses the slur can show that they can be bigoted or is genuinely ignorant of what the slur means (or does not know a more approriate term due to circumstancrs) or there are circumstances where they know that the word is a slur but they can’t avoid saying it. (For example, there is a place called Negros and the character is shown to wince after saying to foreigners who had no clue that the place was named that way.)
So hearing about this so-called sensitivity reader disregarding what the story wants to tell is beyond disappointing.
To share my experience, when working with the late Eiwynn on one of her projects, she had us choose our character’s origin from three different groups, and one of the options she gave for our character’s origin was a slur for Metis people. Now, this was a game about early America and racism was absolutely on-topic, and it made sense for the character talking to the MC to be using a racial slur, but using that term on the stats page felt wrong. So I advised her as such, and she ended up making sure that our options that we’d be using included Metis, but that the character describing us would be using slurs for them (as well as for Irish and German people, the other options).
I wasn’t doing dedicated sensitivity reading, but would personally hope that that advice is the sort writers would find helpful.
I feel like it may be necessary for me to point out here that I am not against the concept of sensitivity readers as a whole. As Ramidel and some others here have posted, there are often cases when a good sensitivity read could be helpful provided they take care to note things like context, dialog, and setting, and then present those concerns to the writer in a kind, helpful manner.
Detailing my personal experience does not mean I’m attempting to paint all attempts at sensitivity with the same brush.
I feel a little uncomfortable with this being its own thread, at least with the way it’s being presented.
This thread was taken out of a conversation about the differences between writing for Hosted and Choice of Games, where I pointed out that one of those differences was the sensitivity reader and I said that my experience was bad. If you look at the dates I posted, it was a week later, after multiple comments saying the context and details of the feedback mattered, that I finally decided to share some of the feedback the SR gave me. I never intended to do that originally, and now that I’m at the top of the new thread, I’m concerned that my comment feels somewhat divorced from its original context. (That being said, I understand why the conversation had to be spun off, I just feel like it is now much more difficult to infer my actual intentions.)
I’d rather avoid sensitivity reader/reading myself.
Those that are insensitive tend to be my most liked.
Yes, that would be my feedback on slurs in a Choicescript title. Since we as the authors are using second-person viewpoint narration, it feels especially egregious to use words or slurs like that in the narration, because it’s supposed to be the player’s character’s thoughts, though depending on the writing style, that distinction may be more or less true.
Even in a racist setting or era, it should, I feel, always be up to the player if they want their character to be racist. The game shouldn’t assume that for them, so the narration shouldn’t use slurs. But if you want a character to use slurs to illustrate their ignorance, hatred, despicable-ness, etc. I think that’s on the table, sure.
You just have to be careful how you do it, and mindful not to go overboard on something like that. It’s one thing to have some slurs pop up occasionally for verisimilitude to remind the player of the setting or time period, it’s another entirely to bombard the reader with them constantly to the point where someone can say, “Good grief. The author sure likes using those words, don’t they?” 
But I would never say slurs are off the table, because there have been amazing works of fiction that use them that would lose a lot of teeth and meaning if words like that were stripped out. Words have power, which is why we are writers, and why we’re even having this particular discussion. You just need to make sure you are using that power responsibly with intention.
If it makes you feel better, I think that’s come through in the discussion.
I want to be clear too, that I’m not against sensitivity readers. Input that you may be inadvertently offending people is invaluable.
I think what this thread has really showed is that invaluable service can be done badly and context, more than specific word choices, is king.
If we want the people to actually accept and welcome sensitivity readers, those readers need to give feedback in a proffesional and constructive way or the pratice will never become widespread. That might mean training sensitivity readers in how to give feedback before letting them loose, and also let and actual editor look over their feedback the first few times they give it to see if it is done in a way that will make make people likely to listen.
it is very importsant to remember that cog authors are contractors. They are unlikely to have that personal relationship with their editor that some authors-editors teams have, so you cannot assume that brutal honesty will work and have to go for standard constructive critism and proffesional tone.
Also it is important to have sensity readers who knows and love the genres they are reading. For a work like parliment of knives its a reader who knows and love vampire stories, but also stories about monsterous people doing monsterous thing.
I’m not sure what kind of authors you’re thinking of who aren’t contractors.
I think it is very different. Mostly proffesional and close to what cog have.
But sometimes you can read in the dedications to the editor that two people have worked together for a very long time. And other times authors simply talks in interview about how they were lucky to find find/get assigned that one editor that really meshes with them and elevste their work. I don’t think I have read an american author do it, though.
It is,however, utterly irrelevant for my bigger point that a cog sensitivity reader and a cog author are very unlikely to known is other, and thus fo npt know where the other personal limits are and thus have to default to the kind of behavoir ypu have when ypu worknwith somebpdy you do not know, versus working with somebody ypu have worked with for a decade or even a year.
Yes, authors (including American authors) often build excellent professional, and even personal, relationships with their editors, but they’re still contractors. And some of the CoG authors and editors do have that kind of rapport.
In any case, most writers aren’t personally acquainted with their sensitivity readers, nor should they be. People who give advice to authors on finding sensitivity readers often caution against asking a friend or acquaintance, because people who like you aren’t necessarily going to feel comfortable telling you where you messed up, especially in a situation that, by its very nature, highlights the ways in which you’re privileged and they’re not. What’s needed is not for sensitivity readers to get to know authors better, it’s for them to develop a sense of professionalism and proportion, and to understand the demands of art as well as the trends of thought and feeling in marginalized communities.
I mean if we look at the thread most authors seems to have had a fine experience with cog sensivitiy readers. They got some advice which was good and eye opening, some they just flat out disagreed with and thus ignored and some which made them adjust a little to get their point clearer across. That is how it should work.
The examples that started this thread, though, is bad. And the quotes given come across someone doing a sporking not giving feedback with the intent to improve a work. It is just unproffesional and I am as I said, deeply shook, that cog led this tone stand without reassing if this was working as intended and doing something. This is the kind of thing that scare authors away and give sensitivity reading a bad reputation.
Hard agree.
Just putting this here to boost it a little. There was quite a lot of preamble to @GreekWinter deciding to actually share the feedback he received on the previous thread. The preamble also makes it abundantly clear that he welcomes feedback on offensive language, and that his comments should be taken entirely as a response to one particular sensitivity reader resorting to name calling and generalisations.
Hard agree. I have written several attempts to add to this paragraph, but actually I don’t think I have anything to add except to repeat it.
My general position on sensitivity readers has been that they’re a nice backstop, but not necessarily something to be relied on.
When I do playtesting, I try to get at least a few testers who inhabit the particular axes of marginalisation which a character might also inhabit (for example, when I wrote Fleur-de-Lys as a trans woman for A Time of Monsters, I made sure that I had multiple trans playtesters from various parts of the world who were willing to provide input and make sure I wasn’t crossing into any tokenization, or fetishisation zones).
The advantage of this is that playtesters are generally committed to the basic concept of your story already, and want it to do well. Their feedback will generally come from a constructive place, and is almost always delivered in good faith.
That means when I do get warnings, it’s long before a sensitivity reader sees a single line, and it’s usually something I can discuss and try to workshop early. That means I don’t think I’ve ever had a real clash with a sensitivity reader - even though I constantly try to push out of my comfort zones with every new game I write.
Of course, this advice is situational. Not everyone has a fanbase to recruit from - but I would definitely recommend it, or at least trying to build a group of beta-readers who match the life experiences of your characters.